


The Lab Escape AU

by The_Mouse_of_Anon



Series: My TMNT AUs [5]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lab Escape AU, TMNT AU, these boys went through a LOT before they got out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23086453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Mouse_of_Anon/pseuds/The_Mouse_of_Anon
Summary: The beginning structure for my Lab Escape AU (along with a preview of the prequel fic). Mostly a rough overview of the turtles and Yoshi as they exist in this reality.
Series: My TMNT AUs [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1464796
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	The Lab Escape AU

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [[here](https://fire-fira.tumblr.com/post/187427993075/i-i-need-more-lab-escape-au)] on 1 September 2019.
> 
> While this does say that I haven't figured out how April and Casey are coming in, I've figured out those details since I wrote this.

> cake4ninja  
>  I-I need more Lab Escape AU ;-;

I have another fic in the works (not yet done unfortunately), but! Since you asked I’ll give you a small preview of the newest fic and some information on the boys and their reality. I hope you enjoy, and I will gladly talk about them and this AU at length– so feel free to send in whatever questions or thoughts about them that you care to. n.n  


(Getting and editing this screenshot took way longer than I want to admit. lol)

————————————————————————

**PREVIEW:**

The eldest winced, but otherwise chose to ignore the parts of the comment he didn’t approve of. “The point is, it’s dangerous. I know we want to get out, I know we want to leave and never come back, but there are a lot of ways it can go wrong.”

The youngest snorted. “We already have their shifts memorized. We know where the cameras are in here. So we time things right. We get out. We leave and don’t look back.”

“We don’t know _outside_ of this room. Not well enough,” the eldest insisted. “All it would take is one misstep and then it would all be over. I don’t want to lose any of you.”

Claws dug into the nest, faintly scraping against the hard floor underneath as the second-eldest reined in a frustrated sigh with an effort. “Lenox. We don’t have a choice. If we leave we might lose one of us, but if we stay we’re not lookin’ at a ‘might be’—we’re lookin’ at a damn near _guarantee_. We _can’t_ stay. If they’re gonna cut any of us open, then we need ta get out before that can happen.”

“And where will we _go_?” His panic was almost a choking thing, the sort of thing that made the eldest want to curl into a ball after huddling down for his own safety. Maybe if he’d been a different type of turtle he would have already withdrawn into his shell most of the way. Unfortunately that wasn’t something he was physically capable of. Even if he had been, with the wide gouge in his shell behind his left shoulder, how much physical safety it would have offered was questionable. And it wasn’t like trying to disappear into his shell would have kept the others safe the way he wanted them to be.

The third-eldest reached out to gently squeeze the eldest’s arm, reassuring. “None of us know. There’s no way _to_ know, not while we’re here. But out there we have a better chance than we do in here.” He knew better than the other three what might happen if they didn’t leave, had a better understanding of what might be done to them in terms of the specifics— he was, after all, the one who had figured out how to read first before turning around and secretly teaching the others and had used his skills to skim through and piece together whatever he could whenever he got the opportunity. He was also the one who had figured out how to open the ventilation shaft and had crept around the facility more than once after the staff had left for the day.

The eldest choked back a worried whine. If only… If only they could go back to the way things used to be, before they had any idea… If only there was no risk of any of them being killed by the very people who claimed they wanted to protect them. They were the only four of their species that had been found, the only ones… When the eldest spoke, it was a choked whisper, forced out past the rapidly forming knot in his chest. They had been frozen long enough; their choices were to either move… or die. “Soon. I- I don’t know when. But soon.”

———————————————————————— 

**WORLD/CHARACTER INFO:**

For those not acquainted with this AU of mine, these are their names before Yoshi helps them change their names:

  * Leo – Lenox
  * Raph – Corsa
  * Donnie – Forsyth
  * Mikey – Verdi



**Now then!**  
The boys were found in an out-of-the-way corner of Central Park in this reality, soon after they were mutated and were still babies. They were kept together because it was pretty quickly obvious that they were social because they kept making noises at each other and expecting a response.

The scar/gouge on Leo’s shell is thanks to an incident when the boys were 6. One of the keepers was being a little too rough with one of his brothers and Leo’s knee-jerk reaction was to bite the guy’s arm as hard as he could, which wound up with him getting thrown against a wall _way_ too hard in the guy’s efforts to get him to let go– and ultimately resulted in a severely cracked shell that lost a chunk in the course of healing. Leo has it in his head that he has to be the appeasing one and has to watch out for his brothers and their well-being, because he’s the one to regularly think of multiple scenarios and the ways they could go wrong, with various contingency plans just in case. The poor kid probably has anxiety.

Before they escaped, Raph took advantage of the fact that the staff assumed there was only so much language they could understand and thoroughly abused that fact as an excuse for having an absolutely horrendous mouth (with loads of ‘seemingly random’ strung-together vulgar phrases to make sure they wouldn’t clue in that he wasn’t just parroting). Like other versions, this Raph is one who likes/prefers to stand his ground and fight back– but he’s also highly aware of his weaknesses and so will do what he can to avoid a situation where he feels powerless. He keeps people at a distance with a lot of snapping, snarling, and bravado while also having the tendency to try to charge head-first at a problem (and damn the consequences), yet he’s got a gentle protective side that makes him want to push back against Leo’s worrying (even if he can’t see a way for things to play out that _doesn’t_ match up with what Leo thinks might happen).

Donnie is an information SPONGE. He was the first to learn how to read (through lots of sneaky observation and carefully picking things apart in his mind) before turning around and teaching the other three, has trained himself to have a near-photographic memory (it was the easiest way for him to absorb any text he got access to when he usually only had a few moments to look), and was very easily bored out of his skull in their enclosure. There was one point where he was bored enough that he tried to climb to the top of their enclosure to get a better look at some of the detail on the ceiling and ended up slipping and breaking his left arm when he landed. He’s also the one who figured out how to open the ventilation shaft without being found out, which led the four of them to be more familiar with the complex as a whole than they otherwise would be (and was actually the source of him getting access to a lot more information). For Donnie knowledge is both power and something he’s felt starved for, so if he’s not careful and if someone doesn’t put the brakes on it fast enough, he could easily become obsessive and so absorbed in learning and information-gathering that he could completely neglect eating or sleeping, along with anything else.

Mikey is the bright ball of sunshine who manages to keep the other three from retreating and hiding or pushing themselves too far. He’s also leading the way in his hope that things will get better, and has been more willing than the other three to trust and take risks that the _right_ people won’t harm them (like Yoshi). Because of his deliberately cheerful disposition he tends to be better equipped not to freeze in a given moment when it might be dangerous to, but he’s also extremely prone to nightmares and when he gets upset he’s prone to hiding. He’s also got a bad habit of trying to deny that anything is wrong with him because he feels like if he gives into his bad moods _too much_ that he won’t be there for his brothers when they need him.

All four of them pushed the ultimate dad-button on Yoshi, and he gladly took them in the night he realized four terrified teenagers were hiding in the alley behind his home. He’s blind and lost his sight during the same incident that killed Tang Shen, though he can still see light and vague shapes of color. Part of his going to America in the first place was due to a falling out with his grandfather (both over who he married and that he refused to be an ‘appropriate’ heir to the clan). He runs a Shinto shrine and allows visitors to spend time in his gardens, and he’s often sought out for advice– all of which makes it easier for him to maintain the privacy of the non-public portion of his home. He rarely makes mention of his knowledge of martial arts or the fact that he was supposed to be his grandfather’s heir for the Hamato clan, unless he feels it’s worth mentioning.

April and Casey both _will_ eventually meet the boys, but I haven’t figured out specifics yet.


End file.
